Welcome to Politeca Lab

It is connected to Politeca Design Knowledge Centre at Design Faculty, Politecnico di Milano. Politeca holds samples, news, technical documentation and catalogues about materials in design process and design knowledge.
Access to resources is provided in loco, directly consulting archive shelfs or through local archive.

Politeca Lab aims to enhance knowledge sources for Politeca users, usign users' knowledge and experience as part of resources useful to the whole community. Starting from this idea, we're using some common ICT tools to prototypate new search services in Politeca archives.

Experiment is managed in this phase from a group of student in service design (ICT for design course ict4design, and the develop of this design process is a part of their final exam. In a wider way, it's included into a PhD research program at INDACO Department, Politecnico di Milano, focusing on the role of ICT tools in design activity to enhance cooperation and creativity.

We're currently prototyping some services, based on three specific themes:
A - it is about new ways to access and manage both digital than physical resources, ways that go beyond the idea that information can just be pinpointed by archives. At the moment the Politeca service doesn't offer a unique access to all resources, and it doesn't have a digital library. The most clear sign of the lack of digital space for research is that it's not possible to retrace, keep and reuse users search paths; on the contrary, keeping this data could be useful both for personal management of searches and for sharing of them with others.

B - The second topic starts from idea that users of Politeca is an actual community of practice, or rather a community where tacit and explicit knowledge can be helpful to each members. Searches by users, online routes, feedback on resources are just some examples of experienced knowledge that it's possible to catch and share. By enhancing the knowledge that comes from sharing, it's possible to increase information flows that currently exist but in latent ways.

C - The third path aim is to enhance a more latent layer of knowledge within the community, such as working knowledge that fills space during activities. Politeca users, whereas they're occasional or not, sometimes cooperate, but in small and isolated groups. Currently there are not any links between these diffused activities.

You can find here descriptions for each service.
They are available to use to all Politeca users.